Planet Earth to: Clinton, Obama and McCain

It's time that the three presidential hopefuls stopped shoveling-out the back of their manure trucks.

Enough already with the tripe, fluff, platitudes, accusations and mud that the 3 amigos have been slinging.

Enough already with the dreams, the experience, the phone calls at 3 in the morning .... blah, blah, blah, blah!

America is in very deep trouble and she needs a PRESIDENT WITH STONES who will tell American's just how deep the pile is that they are currently standing in and how America will get out of it.

I haven't heard any one of the presidential candidates offer specific solutions to;

• putting the brakes on the price of oil which is skyrocketing to levels that will inflate everything out of sight.
• putting a stop to price fixing amongst the big oil companies.
• increasing refinery capacity to reduce prices at the pumps.
• food prices which continue to skyrocket thus putting a huge damper on family spending. Between 2006 - 2007, food prices have soared 40%. That's just plain criminal.
• the bio-fuel scam.
• speaking about scams, when is a future President going to shut down that privately owned corporation known as the Fed - see my series on the Fed.
• this year's accelerating inflation rate.
• medical insurance and health care costs which are heading for the stratosphere.
• no new home equity lines of credit being offered.
• existing lines of credit being shut down.
• 2.5 trillion in losses to U.S. home values so far.
• the destruction of the U.S. dollar around the globe.
• the trillions in losses which are about to hit the U.S. economy from the imminent collapse of prime mortgage-backed bonds and derivitives.
• to prevent taxpayers from being taken to the cleaners by having to pay for the bailouts of investment banks, failed financial institutions and the bankruptcy of government mortgage-insuring, deposit-insuring and pension-insuring agencies.
• to prevent hyperinflation.
• to prevent the national debt from doubling and tripling over the next decade.
• to stop the off-shoring of American jobs
• to call out Bush and Cheney on their plan to start yet another war this time in Iran. Heaven help us all. After 5 years, billions of dollars and over 4,000 lives, the United States of America can't even control the city of Baghdad ... one single solitary city... never mind the country of Iraq. How incompetent is that?

This list could be much longer but the hour is late and I'm becoming more agitated and cantankerous. Let me just end this blog by saying that when it comes to any one of the 3 presidential hopefuls intelligently addressing any one of these few issues and presenting a viable solution, the silence has been quite deafening!

America you deserve better than Obama, Clinton or McCain.

Clinton, Obama and the Flying Pigs.

Both Clinton and Obama talk a lot about the lobbyists and special interests in Washington. Well just how powerful are these "babblers of balderdash?" Here are some interesting facts from the Center for Responsive Politics which tracks lobbyist spending on their OpenSecrets.org website.

• Lobbyists spent a record $2.79 billion in 2007.
• Every day that Congress was in session they spent $17 million to lobby lawmakers.
• Health interests spent more on federal lobbying than any other economic sector - $444.7 million.
• Finance, insurance and real estate was second, spending about $418.7 million.
• Combined, pharmaceuticals and health products shelled out $227 million for lobbying services, or an average of $1.4 million dollars for each and every day of the 164 days that the 110th Congress met in 2007.
• The drug industry has spent $1.3 billion on federal lobbying over the last 10 years, more than any other industry.
• The computer/internet industry spent $110.6 million.
• Hospitals and nursing homes at least $90.5 million.
• In 1998 Total Lobbying Spending was $1.44 Billion.
• In 2007 it was $2.79 billion

So when Clinton and Obama look into the television cameras with a "steely eyed" determination and promise to "reign-in" all those nasty and horrible special interests in Washington ... I say of course you will ....WHEN PIGS FLY!

Does Obama Walk His Talk?

Barack Obama has lambasted lobbyists and moneyed interests in his speeches.

Meanwhile behind his rhetoric, Obama stands out as being the most active of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, with a dozen tariff suspension bills to his name benefiting various corporations.

Hillary Clinton has co-sponsored 19 bills that were introduced by Senator Charles Schumer, D. N.Y.

Only former 2008 presidential hopeful, GOP longshot candidate Sen. Sam Braunback, Kan; had introduced more tariff suspension bills than Obama. Senator Sam had 30 of them.

It's sad how CHANGE can be nothing more than more of the same-old same-old!

The Cantankerous Conservative Poll Results

This month we ran two polls; one for my American readers, the other for my Canadian readers. Here are the reults:

The first poll asked ... "Which of the front-running Presidential candidates do you believe has the skills necessary to "turn-around" the American economy? This is how you voted:

Clinton 3.7%
McCain 25.9%
Obama 29.6%
None of the Above 40.8%

The second question asked; "If you are a Canadian, which one of the Presidential candidates do you believe would be most beneficial to Canada from an economic perspective? This is how Canadians voted:

Clinton 13.3%
McCain 40.0%
Obama 6.7%
None of the Above 40.0%

Did Billary Clinton Mispeak or Mislead?

Okay so it's my turn to take a "kick at the cat." Normally I would have just let this incident "go quietly into that dark night." But the more that I watched Billary's "cheshire cat grin" as she fielded questions about her Bosnia incident, the more cantankerous I started to become.

As you already know, last week Hillary stated that as First Lady, she and her entourage came under direct sniper fire upon landing at the Bosnia Airport in 1996, and that they all had to run. "with our heads down" to the safety of vehicles parked on the tarmac.

But news footage of the visit showed an apparently relaxed Billary greeted on the tarmac by a welcoming group that included an eight-year-old-girl. No evidence of snipers anywhere! Could this really be?

Then in a subsequent statement Billary said that the long grind of the presidential campaign had caused her to "misspeak" about the circumstances of the visit.

Billary said, "I made a mistake and, you know, I had a different memory. And you know, my staff and others have, you know, all kind of come together trying to sort it out." Well here's what I know Mrs. Clinton.

First things first!

• To MISSPEAK means: to speak or pronounce incorrectly... as in "The actor misspoke his lines."
• To LIE means: to give a false impression; anything that serves or is meant to give a false impression ... as in, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."

Secondly, Billary uses as her defense, the long grind of the presidential campaign causing her to misspeak. In other words, "the devil made me do it" defense." Poor baby! A year on the road campaigning has worn her down to the point where sometimes she misspeaks.

So, to my cantankerous mind, the logical extension to her defense is that during the long 4 year grind as President we can expect "a whole lot of misspeaking going on." Oh what the heck, that only puts her on par with other presidents!

Thirdly ... do you believe for one New York second that the secret service would allow her plane to land in Bosnia if there was even the remotest possibility that it would come under sniper fire or any other potential threat. We're talking about the First Lady and her daughter here folks. (Duuuuh)! Don't you think that the various secret services would have swept and secured the perimeter long before the plane landed? And if, by some miracle, snipers were to have breached the perimeter, do you believe that Hillary and Chelsea would have been exposed to running across the tarmac with, as she claimed, bullets whizzing around their heads.

Item 4 ... Billary claims to have "a different memory" of the Bosnia incident....really! Let me ask you this folks. If someone was shooting at you and your daughter don't you think that the specifics of the incident would have been burned into your mind forever without any confusion?

Love the next comment. Billary went on to say; "my staff and others have, you know, all kind of come together trying to sort it out." This is interesting. What does "kind of come together" mean? You have either come together for a purpose or you haven't. You are either pregnant or you're not. Don't believe that you can be "kind of pregnant."

Notice that Mrs. Clinton states that it is her staff and "others" ... who are the others ...that have kind of come together. Why is Hillary not part of this "sorting-out" equation. Is this what America can expect from Billary as president, in terms of personal credibility, taking ownership, responsibility and leadership. When the proverbial s_ _ _ hits the fan will the clean-up be left to her staff and others to kind of come together and try to sort it out? Hmmmmm.

What is there to sort out? If her staff and others were on the trip to Bosnia then they would know exactly what happened. If they weren't, it's quite simple to identify who was on the plane with Hillary and Chelsea and determine what really happened.

It's not rocket science. Either they were fired upon ... or Billary was playing "meet and greet" on the tarmac, all the while grinning like a Cheshire cat!

Did Hillary Clinton misspeak or did she out-and-out lie? You connect the dots!

Race for the White House: Who's giving Money to Who!

There's a fabulous web site that is definately worth visiting - http://www.opensecrets.org

It's the web site of the Center for Responsive Politics. There you will find complete campaign finance reports for the presidential candidates. I was fascinated to find out who's contributing to whom, what the candidates are spending and where, who the heavy hitters are, etc.

I was surprised to learn that the Lobbyists overwhelmingly love Hillary, contributing $764,142 to her campaign while donating only $87,108 to Obama, $422,276 to McCain and a whopping $300 to Ron Paul ... was it something that Ron said?

The Lawyers and law firms are Billary's single biggest fans ponying up a mere $12,452,460 to get her nominated. Obama received $9,732,282 ... boy those lawyers have bucks to toss around. McCain received $2,557,661 and then they sent Ron Paul $237,275... I guess at this point they simply ran out of bucks!

Here's what really sticks out like a sore thumb. The lobbyists, lawyers, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate, and the securities and investments sectors are really dumping on Ron Paul, the man who has promised to uphold the Constitution of the United States by shutting down and abolishing the Federal Reserve.

When the big boys try to make Ron Paul irrelevant, perhaps the alarm bells should go off, and America would be served well by taking a close look at what Ron Paul stands for.

25 Reasons why America is slowly Tanking!

01: The Dow, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have lost all of their 2007 gains in the first 4 weeks of 2008. We'll see the Dow at 9,500 to 10,500 this year.

02: Gold has gained 43.2% and silver has gained 26.1%. Look for gold to hit $3,000/ounce by this time in 2010 and silver will be over $100/ounce.

03: Real estate markets are virtually dead with record levels of inventory. Housing prices will continue to fall for another 2 to 4 years depending upon what action(s) the government is prepared to take and whether or not those actions make sense in the first place.

04: Hundreds of billions in mortgages are due for readjustment to unaffordable levels for millions of homeowners.

05: Defaults on all types of debt are significantly increasing.

06: Consumers are buried in debt with little or no savings. There is an erosion of consumer confidence.

07: Credit markets are frozen.

08: M3 is about 16% (not published - see note at the bottom of this post)

09: Banks are writing-off or writing down tens-of-billions in subprime losses, bad mortgages and loans.

10: Tens-upon-tens of trillions of potential derivative losses are looming just around the corner.

11: The American dollar is tanking with no end in sight. It will probably bottom-out somewhere between 40 to 50 on the USDX from its current position of 75.8.

12: State budgets are running massive deficits and some are close to bankruptcy.

13: The national debt and trade deficits are completely out of control.

14: There is very little left from the manufacturing sector.

15: Unemployment is growing.

16: Off-shoring and outsourcing continue to eliminate the better-paying sectors.

17: Because of outsourcing, a lower dollar will not give American exports an advantage, because there's not much in the way of exports to begin with. So if the dollar is pegged at 55, the GDP would only increase by 1/2% at the top end.

18: Wages will remain stagnant.

19: Oil prices will continue to climb. Look for $125 - $130/barrel this year.

20: There will be price increases for most commodities.

21: Food prices are now at record highs.

22: Irresponsible and unresponsive government. The recent "economic stimulation" package is merely a drop in the ocean. It is not enough to cause any type of permanent improvement in the plight that Americans now find themselves in. As far as I'm concerned it is a PR package pure and simple to help the Republicans in the upcoming presidential election.

23: The Federal Reserve, which is neither Federal nor a Reserve, but rather a privately owned central banking system owned by a cabal of 12 banks with the power granted to it by government to create print and manage Americas money supply, is driving America further in debt each and every day. The Fed is, was and continues to be the biggest scam ever foisted on America. Google it and be surprised at what you will learn. And these greedy clowns control your life through your economic well-being or lack thereof. By the way, even the courts have ruled that the Fed is NOT part of the government.

24: Rampant illegal immigration is providing a source of cheap labour.

25: Perpetual abscence of talented and knowledgeable leadership in Washington today and in the foreseeable future. Listen to President Bush, Billary Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee. Now ask yourself ... is this the best that America can do? Can any one of these people fix America's problems or are they in varying degrees part of the problem?

NOTE:

In the U.S. the Federal Reserve defines (what a surprise) the measures of money supply within 4 categories:

MO: total of all physical currency plus accounts at the central bank that can be exchanged for physical currency.

M1: MO plus those portions of MO held as reserves or vault cash plus the amount in demand accounts (Checking or current accounts)

M2: M1 plus most savings accounts, money market accounts and time deposits (certificates of deposit) under $100,000

M3: M2 plus all other CD's, deposits of eurodollars and repurchase agreements.

The Fed stopped publishing M3 stats in March 2006 (My gosh another surprise) explaining that it costs too much to collect the data and that it doesn't provide significantly useful information ... really?

Slick Willy and H.W. will help Hillary clean-up George W.'s Mess!

CNN's South Carolina Producer Peter Hemby reports former President Bill Clinton as saying, this past Monday, that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she becomes President will be to dispatch him and former President George H.W. Bush on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by H.W.'s son George W.

Good God y'all !!!